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Fedora 17 enters home straight with beta release

The Fedora Project has announced the release of the first and only beta version of Fedora 17, the final version of which is due for publication on 22 May. The beta implements all major changes in full, including the "UsrMove" modification to filesystem structure, which will result in all applications and libraries being stored in subdirectories of /usr/.

Changes since the alpha include updating the Linux kernel to version 3.3.1 and merging patches from Linux 3.4 which enable the kernel to use Intel's RC6 power-saving feature for graphics cores with Sandy Bridge CPUs by default. The pre-release version of GNOME 3.4 has been replaced by the final version released in late March. Gimp has been updated to the first release candidate for version 2.8 which arrived recently. It also includes the components of the OpenStack Essex cloud computing platform, released at the start of this month.

The Fedora Project maintains a list of known problems in Fedora 17, code-named "Beefy Miracle", on its wiki. The developers are working on release candidates for around 8 May, though they will not be as widely distributed as the alpha and beta versions. Both the beta and Fedora 17 were originally scheduled to be released two weeks earlier, but problems while putting together the beta meant that the release dates for the beta and final versions were put back by a week on two occasions (1, 2). Delays of this kind are not uncommon at Fedora, and it is possible that the final release date for Fedora 17 could see further delays.